(1 of )A protester dressed like a polar bear joins other protesters against oil drilling off the California Coast in a march from the state Capitol to a meeting of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

(2 of )Protesters against oil drilling off the California Coast march from the state Capitol to a meeting by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. It's the only public meeting in California on a Trump administration plan to propose six sales of drilling rights off the state's coast. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

(3 of )State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, holds up some of the more than 1,400 pages of public comment against a plan to open oil drilling off the California he will deliver at a meeting of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

(4 of )Bill Pinkham, of Richmond, joined other protesters against oil drilling off the California Coast in a march from the state Capitol to a meeting of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

(5 of )Protesters against oil drilling off the California Coast march from the state Capitol to a meeting of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

(6 of )Carol Brownson of San Francisco holds a photo of the Santa Barbara oil spill she took in 1969 while enrolled at UC Santa Barbara. Brownson and her husband, Paul Wermer, participated in a rally in Sacramento protesting the Trump administration’s expansive offshore oil drilling plan on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018. (GUY KOVNER/ PD)

(7 of )State Sen. Mike McGuire speaks to a crowd of about 700 during a protest at the state Capitol in Sacramento over coastal drilling on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018. (GUY KOVNER/ PD)

SACRAMENTO — Impassioned speeches from oil-drilling foes on the steps of the state Capitol on Thursday sounded like echo from earliest days of the environmental movement in California — and a crowd of about 700 people opposing the Trump administration’s expansive offshore extraction plan relished every word.

“What are we going to say to Donald Trump?” yelled state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, one of the event’s organizers. “Hell no!”

Assemblyman Jim Wood, another Healdsburg Democrat, led a chant that had the crowd calling out, “No drill, no spill!”

“People who have fought this fight for 40 years are here today,” Wood said. “We need you.”

Lawmakers, Latinos, Native Americans and a UC professor spoke during an hourlong rally at the Capitol, followed by a march several blocks to a library gallery where the U.S. Department of Interior held its first and only public meeting in California on the offshore leasing plan announced last month by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

The plan, the largest offering of oil-drilling rights to be sold by the federal government, includes 47 potential leases in every ocean that touches the United States, with six along the California coast.

State officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown, as well as Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, and 36 other Democratic members of Congress immediately blasted the blueprint. On Wednesday, the State Lands Commission sent a letter to the federal government asserting it would not permit new or existing pipelines to bring oil from new wells ashore.

Glen Colwell of Windsor stood near the front of the crowd holding high a sign that said, “We will resist.”

“I want to preserve our ability to forage fresh seafood in unpolluted waters off the pristine California coast,” he said.

Colwell’s sign included a photo of him holding a 36-inch ling cod he caught while fishing from his kayak at Stillwater Cove on the Sonoma Coast.

“I wouldn’t cook him seafood if it was polluted,” said his wife, Lorrie Colwell.

Dianne Monroe of Santa Rosa, wearing a necklace with a polished piece of an abalone shell, said she lived in Texas during the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

“I am here for future generations to have the beauty of the coastline, the nourishment we draw from the sea,” she said.

The federal oil drilling plan was an outgrowth of President Trump’s “America First” energy policy announced in April. It has faced unanimous opposition from California’s political leaders, with the fiercest backlash from coastal legislators.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat who represents East Los Angeles, made of point of aligning himself with the legislators from those shoreline districts.

“You mess with our coast, you pollute our cities,” he said. “Why are we going backward?”

State Sen. Hannah Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, called the Trump administration “the most backward in the history of the nation.”

“Offshore oil drilling is not safe for life on our coasts,” she said. “The damage that oil spills do can lasts for years. We cannot let this happen.”

Experts have said the oil industry is unlikely to come prospecting on the North Coast, which has no drilling facilities, given the current low prices for crude oil.

But two oil-bearing basins off the Sonoma and Mendocino county coasts would be prime targets for oil and natural gas development.

Joining the march from the Capitol to the library were a 25-foot long inflatable blue dolphin from the Earth Island Institute and a person in a snow white polar bear suit holding a sign that said: “No Arctic drilling.”

At a press conference in front of the library, McGuire referred to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management meeting as a “sham hearing.” Others faulted it for being held 100 miles from the coast and not amounting to a public hearing.

Inside, on a marble-floored gallery, BOEM officials met and answered questions from members of the public. Computers were set up for people to submit official comments on the oil drilling plan.

Waiting in line to get in, Carol Brownson of San Francisco showed off a copy of a black-and-white photo she took of a dark oil-coated beach in Santa Barbara in 1969, when she was a student at UCSB.

“A horrible mess,” she said.

Trump’s plan to renew oil drilling in California, she said, is “despicable.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.